Be a Roman in Rome..

This is a famous proverb which many of us follow outside our country. But we forget the proverb in our own country. Recently I was roaming through one of the malls in Chennai along with my friends. We were fagged up and thought of getting freshened up by having some food or beverages in one of the shops in the food court. As usual my friend started to pull my wallet out for the refreshment. I walked towards a juice counter and was having a look at the menu of juices. I could notice that an old man was enquiring about the ingredients of a juice to the vendor. The vendor was very much a local guy from Chennai. I could notice it easily by seeing some of his characteristics. However he pretended to be an English man. The scornful shopkeeper replied back to the old man in English which was so pathetic. He himself made lot of grammatical mistakes. He was pretending to be smart in front of a group of lassies who were in the queue. I was sure that the old man did not understand the shopkeeper and quietly walked away with his juice. I was perturbed after seeing that. Immediately I rushed towards him and tried to speak in Malayalam (Another popular south Indian Language). The shopkeeper had no clues of what I was saying and he spoke to me in Tamil. I said I know only the language I spoke. I repeated the same conversations for a while and I had a good time teasing him. Finally I spoke in Tamil to him and could teach him a lesson. I said to him to speak only the language which the customer speaks. The same thing happens in most of the places in Metropolitan cities. It is fine to converse in English to those who are new to a city or place in India who don’t know the regional language.

This also happens with most of the guys who returns from US or UK after 2 or 3 months. They try to imitate the British or US accent which would be too pathetic to listen or follow. A guy who is settled in US or UK for 5-6 years will definitely get an American or Brit accent which is obvious. But the former would look too insane. Some people like this make a mockery out of themselves by doing such things to the society.

Those who have read this blog kindly speak in your mother tongue or regional language. We are not going to loose anything out of this. Communication is something which needs to be clear and effective at the end of the day.